A Love That Prevails
by smilelaughread
Summary: With their sanity, Bellatrix took their family, but sometimes magic has a funny way of working everything out. For the 5 Drabbles Competition. Happy ending.
1. I'd Do It Again If I Had To

_"I'd do it again if I had to." - 1/5 for the Five Drabbles Competition at HPFC._

* * *

Frank and Alice were touching just barely, her fingertips held in his hand, but the way they looked at each other connected them far more deeply. There was fear and sorrow in their eyes, which were bloodshot from adrenaline. Their hearts beat out a frantic rhythm in tandem. Alice could still remember the smell dark magic. Behind her eyelids, whenever she blinked, Alice saw the spiralling blue streak of light-

"You didn't have to take that curse for me," Alice said, voice wavering.

They were the best of the best, but even trained Aurors made mistakes, no matter how dire the circumstances. Hers had almost cost her Frank.

He shook his head minutely, and she wished she could pardon herself as easily as he offered his forgiveness.

They were alone in the room - or so it felt, because Lily was performing a series of healing charms and anti-curse spells. Alice had apparated them immediately to the safe house - after capturing the Death Eater they'd been hunting, of course. He hadn't stood a chance in the face of her fury.

It was with heart-wrenching relief that Alice noticed Frank's breathing was becoming less laboured as the pain receded. The tension slowly slipped from his features, relaxing the muscles that had been tight around his lips.

"I'd do it again if I had to," he whispered with a small smile. "I'd do it a million times over."

His promise was never put to the test, because that would be their last offensive attack on the Order's part before the Longbottoms were caught by Bellatrix Lestrange.


	2. Princeton Avenue

_Princeton Avenue (Issues) - 2/5 for the Five Drabbles Competition at HPFC._

* * *

 _What is a man, who lays a hand on his lover, and calls it tough love, tough love_

* * *

 _Your roots grow in the cracks of the alleys, college park made you_  
 _Man enough to see, man enough to see, there ain't a goddamn man in me_  
 _(There ain't a goddamn man in me)_

* * *

Frank only ever had very fleeting moments of lucidity.

He spent a portion of precious time trying to piece his existence together. It was with great sadness that he realized, time and time again, that he remembered the torture more than his family. Bellatrix and her husband, all the Death Eaters, Voldemort himself - he hated them. They were not women and men, they were barely even human.

Much of his time was also spent trying to convince himself that closing his eyes wouldn't cause him to fade from existence. It never worked, because a part of him knew that the next time he realized he was awake, far too many days would have slipped through his fingers.

He was falling through the cracks of time, losing everything that might define him.

There were no stirrings of magic inside of him. He hadn't been able to save his wife. He had left his baby son behind.

He'd never said goodbye.

In those moments - usually over before they even started - he sometimes saw Alice sleeping. Sometimes she mumbled. Sometimes she screamed.

Not once did she recognize him enough to have any conversation. Perhaps she'd extend a candy wrapper to him - and then conscious thought would be just out of his grasp and he'd fall back into the memories of agony that froze his mind and crushed his heart.

He was happy they weren't dead, but sometimes he wished it over the emptiness that filled him when he recognized that his whole existence would always be the hospital wing. He'd watch them both age, seeing it in little bursts as though they were both strangers to him even though he'd once known her better than anyone else.

The thing he missed the most was love.

Somehow it always came back to love.

Love.

So simple. It was silence, comfort, and a lightness in his soul.

So complex. It could change from a spark to a roaring fire. It was understanding. It was a million memories that boiled down to one person. She'd made him the happiest man in the world. Then the feelings would loop back to hatred of the Death Eaters.

His sanity, family, and love was gone - stolen. Frank wished, in the heartbeats of time that pushed his mind to break through to reality, that it all might be fixed someday.


	3. Miserable

_Misery - 3/5 for the Five Drabbles Competition at HPFC._

* * *

 _The ceiling was white. So was the other man's hair. The person in the funny reflective glass looked old and tired, though familiar. Everything was white. She had candies in her pockets that she sucked on to pass the time._

Alice's flashes of reality blinded her, catching her unexpectedly between blinks sometimes. They told her that Augusta was unhappy - she only ever visited with Neville, as far as Alice could know. She always looked so tired, but cared for Neville very strongly.

 _The window was a funny spot to sit._

The trained auror inside of her always tried to assess the situation, but the clarity was always gone just as quickly as it came.

 _She sat and waited forever, it seemed, though she never knew what exactly she waited for._

Neville always changed. Those bright moments of consciousness caught her by surprise when she saw his height, his growth, his life warp before her eyes. Everything was sudden, time jumped ahead months at a time in the space of the briefest breath - or so it seemed.

Then she blinked, and she savoured her husband's tight grip. Any moment she didn't commit to memory and treasure would be lost forever when insanity pulled back over her mind.

 _Alice blinked again._

 _Once, she sat and held hands with the strange man in her room. An unnameable feeling rose inside of her, but Alice remembered pain and quiet - not happiness. It was rather chilly. She left the old man and wandered back to the soft bed. For some reason, the one on the right seemed to be hers. She didn't know how she knew that._

Neville was miserable.

Every time she saw her son hunched over his father, tears clinging to the tip of his nose, she ached. He cried silently, though his shoulders shook violently. Alice clung to her memories of Frank, wondering if he knew who she was anymore.

In those infinitesimal moments, she loved her family fiercely. She wished they could once again be young and free.

Then it was snatched away once again.

 _A boy came in to visit. She had to check that it wasn't the same man playing a trick on her, because this new one was also very familiar. She had to give him something, when she saw something dark and sad in his eyes._

 _She pressed a candy wrapper into his outstretched hand, which waited as though it was a ritual, not something she was doing for the first time. She thought that was rather strange._

 _It didn't make any sense when his face got wet, so she closed her eyes and he disappeared._


	4. Hold

_Hold - 4/5 for the Five Drabbles Competition at HPFC._

* * *

Exactly once, they caught each other.

"Alice?"

She nodded.

They held each other tightly. They kissed. They touched long-unfamiliar skin, ran fingers through hair that was white and thin from the curse, and made promises never to let go.

They held onto one another until the shouting and screaming from their empty bodies called mediwitches to pull them apart.

Sweaty, undulating bodies were separated, pallid skin painfully disconnecting. Their minds were too far gone to feel it. Their family was called in - the boy and the older woman - to inform them that the two adults were hurting each other. They were too unstable. They had to be moved.

The moment, when they would separately recall it some time following the event, had been perfection. It was an image they clung to with fervour and desperation. They wouldn't forget it, not for the rest of their agonizing existences.

Then they realized they were confined in solitary rooms.

No one was around to hear the screaming and nightmares that came from separation.

They were hardly aware of it, but being apart was sinful. They'd been through everything together, and it was a deep instability that was established in both their bodies which prevailed as they slowly forgot about that mysterious other person that had once shared a room with them.

Alice gave the boy candy wrappers, amazed over and over again about how he seemed to always know that she was going to do just that.

Frank stared blankly as the boy held his hand.

The question on the tip of their tongues, never to be verbalized: where is the third member of our family?

Silently, they longed for something they couldn't remember.


	5. Shadow

_Shadow - 4/5 for the Five Drabbles Competition at HPFC._

* * *

Alice only realized her eyes were open when the blinding light faltered for a moment. A shadow fell over her, and it took a moment to adjust her gaze and focus in on the face. She grappled for a second with the frightening thought of not recognizing, and then a name fell from her lips.

How could she ever have forgotten? "Neville!"

He was red-eyed from crying, tall and broad, and beside him...

Alice pushed herself into a sitting position, shocking her body but ignoring the fuzziness in the periphery of her vision. "Frank!"

She took in his youthful appearance with hunger, amazement, and confusion.

She was dreaming, it had to be, because when she slowly lifted her hands to her eyes, they were no longer spotted with the curse's damage. When she blinked, she opened her eyes to find the same scene in front of her.

A cruel hallucination, but then it spoke to her.

"He's cured us, Alice," Frank said. His smile was genuine, and Alice felt instinct take over as she smiled back.

"Who cured us?"

"Neville. A spell to undo the damage. It's been - more than a decade, Alice. But he's done it. Our boy has done it."

Alice didn't understand.

She didn't have to, because then Augusta Longbottom - older than she remembered, but just as intimidating - was there, smiling down at her, and Alice knew she couldn't be dreaming because Augusta had never smiled like that at her. Her imagination couldn't have created that image on its own.

"He might finally be worth his name," the older woman said. "I'm glad you're awake. They'll keep you here for some time, just to make sure recovery continues."

Alice was speechless, but then Frank was pulling her to her feet and into a tight hug. Neville was behind her and wrapped strong arms around them both. Alice knew that even if her knees gave way as they threatened to, they would continue supporting her.

"The war is done - for good," Neville whispered. "And we're going to be a family again. I have so much to tell you."

The fog in her mind slowly cleared away, and she tightened her hold on Frank and Neville. "I love you both," Alice said. Never again would she let go.


End file.
